San Jose: Expressing delight over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to San Jose, Convener of Indo-American Community of West Coast, Khande Rao, on Saturday said that the initiatives taken by the former since assuming office will make a significant difference in the country’s progress.

“We’re all excited and overwhelmed to see Prime Minister Modi visiting Silicon Valley…We are all pained to see the state of India not progressing as much as we want to see,” Rao told ANI.

“However, when Mr. Modi became Prime Minister, initiatives he launched like clean India, smart cities, Make-in-India, they all resonate with us…We see the significant differences these initiatives (launched by PM Modi) are going to make,” he added.

Rao felt that the Prime Minister understood the difficulties faced by the start-ups, saying that the solid steps and policies put forth by the latter would facilitate start-ups in India.

“This is the first time I can see any Indian leader could even understand the graphs of what start-up means…Start-ups are about risk-taking; People, innovators come together, they have a vision and are ready to do anything to transform that into action,” he said.

“Prime Minister realized this and he’s putting solid steps and policies that would facilitate start-ups in India,” he added.

Prime Minister Modi departed for San Jose, California, a short while ago where he will visit Tesla Motors and meet top officials of IT companies, including Tim Cook (Apple Inc.), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Shantanu Narayen (Adobe).

Prime Minister Modi today acknowledged Google chief executive Sundar Pichai’s remarks that his company saw India as a key market and looked forward to the leader’s visit to his campus in San Jose.

The Prime Minister earlier today made a strong bid for reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) before leaving for California.